Creating a Character-driven World or World-driven Characters
A few weeks ago, I was trying to find some inspiration for a sub-plot involving the Raven Queen in our homebrew world when I came across an interesting video in Matt Colville’s “Running the Game” series.
“Epic Fantasy in the Modern World”
In that episode, titled “Fiction vs Fantasy,” Colville references an essay by Stephen R. Donaldson from 1986, “Epic Fantasy in the Modern World: A Few Observations.” Donaldson claims that
fantasy is a form of fiction in which the internal crises or conflicts or processes of the characters are dramatized as if they were external individuals or events. Crudely stated, this means that in fantasy the characters meet themselves – or parts of themselves, their own needs/problems/exigencies – as actors on the stage of the story, and so the internal struggle to deal with those needs/problems/exigencies is played out as an external struggle in the action of the story.”
Donaldson, “Epic Fantasy in the Modern World”
In other words, Donaldson holds that in fantasy, the larger world functions as an expression of the characters themselves. At one point later in the essay, for example, he reads Sauron in Lord of the Rings as the personification of the darkness already in Frodo.
He continues working through his definition of fantasy by comparing it to modern fiction:
In realistic fiction, the characters are expressions of their world, whereas in fantasy the world is an expressions of the characters. Even if you argue that realistic fiction is about the characters, and that the world they live in is just one tool to express them, it remains true that the details which make up their world come from a recognized body of reality – tables, chairs, jobs, stresses which we all acknowledge as being external and real, forceful on their own terms. In fantasy, however, the ultimate justification for all the external details arises from the characters themselves. The characters confer reality on their surroundings.
Donaldson, “Epic Fantasy in the Modern World”
I love that last sentence: “The characters confer reality on their surroundings.”
There are aspects of Donaldson’s article that I would push back against in terms of contemporary fiction now; there have been some really important swings since 1986, but that’s a topic for another time. I highly encourage you to read his essay though!
But back to D&D…
…and the application of Donaldson’s essay to your RPG world.
In the YouTube video, Matt Colville works through a difference he sees between the show he had been running, and how he DMs in general, and the narrative Matt Mercer was telling in Season One of Critical Role with Vox Machina.
Colville sees Critical Role, and many homebrew campaigns for that matter, as a prime example of fantasy, especially according to Donaldson’s categories. The external conflicts the characters encounter are reflections of some internal part of themselves or their histories.
In his own game, which more closely resembles the world of fiction (speaking super broadly of course), the players at Colville’s table can choose to act on the world. It’s up to them to make their mark, thwart a villain, forge alliances, etc. The storyworld will continue on without them. They’re part of a larger political system.
That’s of course not to say that that isn’t the case in Critical Role! However, Colville emphasizes where the story’s impetus is coming from. Is the world character-driven, or are the characters driven by the larger events of their world?
Of course I also think it would be helpful for you to watch his video and process these divisions for yourself.
In Your Game
These differentiations leave us with some really interesting ideas as players, DMs/GMs, writers—whatever form(s) of creator you are.
- I think it’d be pretty easy to start with asking which category best fits your own game. I doubt it will be fully one or the other, but, in general, does one overarching category better fit your narrative and the type of story you’re wanting to tell?
- Working from Donaldson’s question at the beginning of his essay: why? And not just “why did you pick that,” but digging deeper, why tell the story in that way? What are you hoping it might be allowed to do? What imaginative work or internal and external conflict, is fueling this particular narrative construction?
- Plunging in further, what do you believe about D&D or other RPGs? What do you believe about literature, fiction, storytelling? What kind of stories do you think the world needs more of? What are you wanting to write or say?
- And getting beyond the personal just a bit, or working our way back outwards: The stories you hold on to, return to, where do they fall along this spectrum? What do you value about them?
So here we are. We each have a unique story behind what we create, the stories we want to tell. It’s always comforting to me to know that other people have navigated these waters before, that much of the territory has already been charted, but there’s still so much more we might add as we contribute our own stories.
I hope this helps you think through your story in a new way and encourages you to pursue sharing it, whether fiction, fantasy, or, more likely, somewhere in between.
If you’re looking for additional ways to add depth and detail to your homebrew campaign or further flesh out an existing campaign, we have a few series for you to check out:
Character Development and Personality Type
Creating a Vibrant World with Character Types
Similarly, if you like reflective posts like this, I’d love for you to read my love letter to D&D and thoughts on the power of imagination in RPGs!
If you like what you’re reading, please consider supporting the blog by purchasing our adventures and supplements in our shop or sponsoring us on Patreon. We appreciate you so much! Thank you for joining us on this adventure! – Beth and Jonathan
Hannah says
Definitely a lot to think about here! 🙂 Do you think the fiction/fantasy, types of external conflict, etc. also have an influence on whether the PC(s) tend to act reactively or proactively throughout the story?
Beth says
Thank you, I’m glad you liked it! And that’s such a great question, and one I honestly hadn’t thought of! I’m sure that it plays a role on some level, or maybe even shapes which PCs are acting and which ones are reacting in a given situation?
One example that immediately comes to mind was a review I read that was cranky with Rogue One because they said that the characters are reacting the whole time instead of driving the story themselves. I thought that was a frustrating critique because 1) I love Rogue One, but more seriously 2) sometimes we’re in situations that are a lot larger than us and where we can’t necessarily see the space to proactively do something until we’ve reacted to it first.
If the narrative leaned really hard on the fiction side of things, then I think the PCs would almost need to be acting most of the time, even if how they got into the story or situation in the first place was something they had to react to. Otherwise, in those worlds, they would be cleaning up messes and not able to prevent anything. I feel like it would also have to depend on what kinds of villains someone is working with, especially how aware they are of the PC(s) and how much they care about their existence.
I’m so curious to hear what you think, though! I’ll keep mulling this over for sure!
Hannah says
Yeah, I think proactive vs. reactive differ even with PCs in the same group. My thought is, too, that a fiction model would drive proactive actions whereas the fantasy model would naturally encourage reactivity.
I do agree too that the nature of villains of the campaign make a big difference– PCs would need to spring into action to stop an apocalyptic, world-ending force, but a more personal villain might cause problems for the PCs before they had any chance to do anything about it. Then again, I can see a scenario where the reverse is true, where a large force impacts the PCs and spurs them to act and the villain out to personally malign the PCs is a consequence of previous proactive actions.
Maybe it’s more a pendulum swing or a cycle than a straight-up dichotomy? Like the DM to player flow, where the DM describes the situation -> the player asks questions and decides what to do -> the DM calls for a roll and adjudicates the result -> player asks questions and decides what to do next.
Beth says
Yes! I think you’re absolutely right about it modeling the DM to player flow, and I think that the individual DMs and personalities of the players will play a major factor too. In most things, I angle toward them being a swing or cycle, and I think that’s definitely the case here. No one game is going to be all fantasy or all fiction, so that would in turn affect the amount of reactivity vs proactivity in a given narrative or point in the narrative, right?
I really love the differences you’re marking in the villain and disaster types, and I think that’s part of what Matt Colville was getting at too that I’m not sure if I really got into enough in the post. How much are the villains proactive or reactive in the world, and how much are they a reflection of the characters, especially the characters’ internal state?